


Making Exceptions

by silveradept



Category: Calvin & Hobbes
Genre: ...if you squint, 5+1 Things, Adult Calvin (Calvin & Hobbes), Adult Susie (Calvin and Hobbes), Calvin Parenting, Canon-Typical Hobbes Uncertainty Principle, Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie, Multi, Noodle Incidents, Parenting Calvin, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 22:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16842094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: Vignettes from Calvin's life as he grows older and discovers love and parenting, grudgingly admits that his mother might actually know something about both of those subjects, and passes on family traditions to the next generation.





	1. Susie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [florahart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/gifts).



"Mom, Susie's here and she needs some--oh, hey, what's that?" Calvin pointed at the scrapbook on the table.

"Something to remember you by," his mother said, turning a page.

"Mom, I'm not dying," Calvin said. "It's just prom."

"Yes," his mother said, with a hint of amusement behind it. "But prom means graduation, and then you're off to college, so I need to have my memories in place by then."

Calvin hugged his mother, sweeping his eyes over the page. "I'm going to visit, you kn--really? You're including the gold star I got from the library? What does that have to do with anything?"

"It's the first star you got for sitting still in storytime," his mother said.

"So I was a wiggler," Calvin said skeptically.

"There's a story that goes with it," his mother said.

"I'd like to hear it," Susie said, having taken a seat on the couch. "Maybe while your mom braids my hair?"

"Hmph," Calvin said, rolling his eyes. "I'm going to make sure Hobbes is ready."

Calvin's mother settled in behind Susie on the couch, and then laughed.

"Dear, you can't braid a pixie cut." she said.

"I know," Susie replied, "but I couldn't think of any other way to get Calvin out of the room so you could tell the story without interruptions."

"There's not all that much to tell, really. Calvin's tendency to get lost in his imagination every now and then started long before he went to school. I tried to take him to story time every week at the library, but we could usually only stay for one story, because after the librarian was done telling it, Calvin would still be in that story, and then he'd act like he was part of the story after everyone had moved on to the next thing."

"Mm-hmm," Susie nodded, recalling a few times where she had been on the receiving end of Calvin's flights-of-fancy.

"Calvin is also brilliant and perceptive, and he saw those gold star stickers on kids coming out of story time, and he learned what they were for, and he wanted one. And we kept trying for a long time to get him one, but he kept getting too interested in the story."

"How did you get one?" Susie asked.

"I struck a deal with the librarian," Calvin's mother replied. "For the very last story time that Calvin was going to attend, the librarian agreed to read the shortest, most boring books that he could find. It worked. Calvin made it all the way through story time and got his gold star."

"That's adorable," Susie said, chuckling. "Does Calvin know?"

"Yep," Calvin said, reappearing in the doorway. "Figured it out not too soon after it happened, actually. I couldn't bear to tell Mom, though. She looked so proud of me that I didn't want to ruin her moment. But after that day, we never went back to story time. Instead, we started ramping up the amount of books we checked out each week."

Calvin held out a corsage to Susie.

"Aren't tiger lilies a little on the nose?" Susie asked.

"Blame Hobbes," Calvin said in return.

"Have fun, you two," Calvin's mother said.


	2. Yuki

"No, Mom. I'm still dating Susie. Susie is dating Yuki, and we both thought it would be a good idea to bring zie home and meet you before we all appeared for Thanksgiving. If Yuki didn't understand biscuit-tossing, the whole thing might go sideways."

"I still don't understand," Calvin's mother said, "but of course Yuki is welcome here."

"Thanks, Mom," Calvin said, giving his mother a hug. "I'm going to go find Dad."

"He's out on a ride," she replied, "but he should be on the park loop."

"Will you be okay if I go for a bit?" Calvin asked Yuki, who nodded.

Calvin bounced out the door, Hobbes in tow.

Yuki waited until the door closed before turning to Calvin's mother.

"Can you help me?" zie asked. "I've been trying to find something that Calvin says is very precious to him, and it doesn't seem to exist anywhere."

"What's that?"

"Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie."

Calvin's mother stifled a laugh.

"Ah, that," she said, trying very hard to sound serious. "Well, you see, you won't find it in any bookstore or online."

"Why not?"

"It, well...it's not _entirely_ in Calvin's head, but it's never been written down, either."

Yuki nodded, which was a very different reaction than Calvin's mother expected.

"You're familiar, then, with the way Calvin tends to get lost in stories?" she suggested.

Yuki nodded again. "Very much so. It's one of the things that I find attractive about him," zie said.

"Are you interested in dating Calvin? Because he said you weren't dating him," Calvin's mother said, looking confused.

"No, I'm not dating Calvin, but Susie insists that all the people in her polycule get along enough to sit down and eat at the kitchen table. And, frankly, Calvin is quite attractive, both in body and mind."

"His father and I wondered sometimes," Calvin's mother said, "whether he chased Susie because she was the only girl on our block, and he didn't want to be seen as any weirder than he already was. Moe would have certainly teased him mercilessly about it."

"Calvin's life has always been weird," Yuki said. "Much like this obsession with a nonexistent book."

"Oh, right," Calvin's mother said, realizing she'd wandered off-track. "Hamster Huey, I think, might have started as one of the hundreds of children's books that we read to him as a child. But Calvin doesn't keep stories separate, like others might. I think there's a part of his brain that's labeled Story, and anything that's in a story that he likes gets smashed in there and stuck to other parts of other stories until they've become one giant story that connects everywhere to everything inside it. Which makes it easy for, say, a story about rescuing a princess from a dragon to turn into a science-fiction rayguns-and-dinosaurs adventure and eventually wrap up as a pulp hard-boiled detective noir before he gets either bored with it or done with that fragment, which gets folded back into that Story part for the next time."

"Fascinating," Yuki said, arching an eyebrow like one of zie's favorite alien characters.

Calvin's mother shrugged, missing the reference entirely.

"At a certain point, his father and I realized that just telling stories to Calvin wasn't enough to keep his attention engaged, even when we thought they were the kids of stories he really liked. Calvin has always been overflowing with creativity, and we have tried to nurture that from the very beginning. So we started asking Calvin to fill in the details. We started small, with things like the name of the villagers near Hamster Huey's house. Sometimes, they would have the same name as the last night and sometimes they would be some other name, depending on how the day went. When Calvin asked about where the book was, we had a friend make a dust jacket that we would put over a book in Calvin's room, and he would always ask for Huey at night. We'd pull things from inside the book we used as 'Hamster Huey' when Calvin's imagination flagged, or he seemed to be unable to get out of a situation. But Hamster Huey, the story he had been telling us for all those years, has always been in his head. Maybe some day, someone will get him to write all of it down."

"Oh," Yuki said, clearly surprised. "Things make so much more sense now. Calvin couldn't pin down details about the book, or the story, or the characters. He just has the title. But now, I think I have an idea. I was going to try buying him a copy of the book for the holidays. Now that I know what the story is, maybe I can give him a better gift than that."

Calvin's mother smiled.

"If you ever want to cheer Calvin up, ask him about the time Hamster Huey got beheaded." she said, right before the door opened and Calvin and his father entered.

"Not feeling so smug about that victory now, huh, Pops?" Calvin said.

"That only happened because the Patent Office can't get enough funding to hire someone who actually knows something to examine applications," his father said. "And someone to organize and classify their Byzantine archives," he added as an afterthought.

Calvin's father looked over at the couch.

"Hello, Yuki," he said.

"You've met already?" Calvin said.

"Yes, we have, but you're not supposed to know that yet," his father replied, before heading to the bedroom, Calvin pestering him for details.

Calvin's mother shook her head.

"And yet, I still married him," she said, for Yuki's sake.

Mostly.


	3. Calvin

"I'm freaking out, Hobbes! In just a little while, there's going to be a little kid in this household! And I'm going to be expected to parent!"

"Relax," Hobbes said. "I don't think anyone is going to expect you to actually parent anything."

"Not helping," Calvin retorted.

"You're going to be fine," Hobbes insisted. "Your mom raised you, and you turned out fine."

"Mom!" Calvin said. "She would know what to do."

Calvin grabbed his phone and dialed. His mother picked up.

"Is anyone hurt?" she asked.

"No," Calvin said.

"Is anything on fire?" she asked, clearly going down a mental checklist of potential disasters.

"No," Calvin said. "I know how to deal with those. Nobody is in labor, in the hospital, or overdrafted on their bank account. The house is fine, the people are fine, I'm just really nervous because today is adoption day."

"Oh." Calvin's mother was silent for a bit.

"That's normal," she said, finally.

"You weren't expecting this, were you?" Calvin said, amusement creeping into his voice.

"Not really," she replied. "Of all the people in your household, we expected Susie to be the one having a conniption."

"Everyone else is _doing_ something. Susie and Yuki are going to get the child. Dawn and George are baking and decorating and making the house ready."

"What did they tell you to do?" Calvin's mother said.

"Stay out of the way and...make a story," Calvin said.

"So they gave you the important thing," his mother said sympathetically.

"Yeah. What did you and Dad do with me?"

"I was too busy trying to give birth to you and not kill your father in the process."

"After I was born, then," Calvin said, smiling into the phone.

"Mostly, we kept track of your firsts. Not just when you first talked or when you first walked or crawled, either. Your first nap at home, the first time you burped, the first book we read to you. Your first bruise, and the first time you made an ice pack on your own. The first time you took your father's drill to the wall. And most of the times after that, too. The first tree house, the first time with Rosalyn, the aftermath of the first game of Calvinball."

"The first day Hobbes came?" Calvin asked.

"The first time you took a picture of yourself," his mother said. "Because now you had Hobbes. It was the first of many more pictures of the two of you."

"That's the problem," Calvin said. "I can document everything in real time, so long as I have the hard drive space, but data isn't a story. And I don't just want to look at firsts, because I want to see how things change over time."

Calvin's mother made a thinking sound.

"I'm sure you'll figure it out," she said, after a while. "We would never admit it in front of you while you were younger, but there was a lot about parenting, and especially parenting you, that we had to make up as we went along. We always worried that it would be the wrong decision, but you always came through all right. Sometimes we realized we need to teach you something, like 'flour is flammable, baking soda is not,' and sometimes we realized we needed to learn something."

"Like?"

"All the right names and attributes of dinosaurs. And how to cut holes in cardboard boxes without destroying the boxes themselves."

"I seem to recall you teaching me that skill fairly quickly," Calvin said, laughing.

"You were always inventing something. It was always surprising to see how you could turn a cardboard box into a a transmogrifier, a duplicator, a time machine, a robot exoskeleton, or Wicket Five," his mother said.

"Seven," Calvin corrected automatically. "Cardboard boxes were banned from being Wicket Five after the Flooded Field Incident."

Calvin's mother laughed. "That's right. I forgot." She paused for a bit, still chuckling, before continuing.

"I won't say we were always right, either, but I think we managed to raise a man who can handle being a parent himself."

"...Thanks, Mom," Calvin said, not entirely sure he'd heard her correctly.

"Does your child have a name?"

"Yeah," Calvin said. "Each one of us got to choose a name, and we'll see how many of them actually stay."

"That...well, we'll see how that turns out," his mother said uncertainly.

"It'll be fine, Mom. Susie just texted to say they're on their way home, so I should be ready to say hello."

Calvin paused for a long moment.

"Love you, Mom. See you at Thanksgiving."


	4. Wormwood

To: Mom [virtueofpatience@grandma.mrbunsplayhouse.org]  
From: Calvin [spacemanspiff@hobbes.mrbunsplayhouse.org]  
Subject: Re: Snow People do _not_ have buttocks!  
Attachment: dinosaur_winter_carnage-val_17.jpg

Mom,

Thanks for the picture. It looks like the kid was paying attention while we were sketching. It took us three hours just to make the model together, so I'm glad all that time out in the cold had a good result.

Susie insisted that we go out in the back yard because she didn't want to "deal with 'London Breeches Falling Down' complaints again." I think she's overreacting, honestly, but I know better than to say that when she has that look in her eyes.

I know that you and Dad tried to keep me safe at school, and I appreciate the offers. I talked with the counselors at the school, and they told me it's not as hard as it used to be for kids to get help with issues, whether they're in the head, the body, or other people. You told me that we do violence to a child by stifling their natural selves. I don't know what I'll do if it gets to be too much, but I recall I tended to be a bit more actively destructive at this age, so there's hope the kid won't turn out exactly like me.

Tell Dad thanks for the advice about the chainsaw slippage. It worked just like he said, despite my skepticism that bike chain and cutting chain have anything to do with each other. I got everything fixed in time for the festival, and this year, there was a contribution from the newest member of the creative team. I've attached a picture of the best angle of our creation.

-Calvinosaurus Rex!

\---

To: Calvin [spacemanspiff@hobbes.mrbunsplayhouse.org]  
From: Mom [virtueofpatience@grandma.mrbunsplayhouse.org]  
Subject: Snow People do _not_ have buttocks!  
Attachments: snow_moon.jpg

Calvin:

Miss Wormwood apparently still has me programmed into her school phone as your contact. So I got to hear all about what happened today in class.

I know that you are trying to encourage creativity in your child in the same way we encouraged you, but I'm not sure that standing up in front of class and declaring "I'm still working out my pronouns, so for now you can call me The Artist Formerly Known As Alexandra Wilhemina Desdemona Katherine Margaret Derkins" and then drawing a picture of a snowman mooning the classroom on the board as a representation of the child's new name is the best way to make a good impression.

I know that you and Moe buried the hatchet a long time ago, but while you were in school, you were miserable, and everything was worse because nobody raised a finger to help you. Your father and I spent a long time yelling at the principal about his "educational philosophy" that seemed to be "let the weird kid get bullied until he becomes normal," and while we really hope the school has improved since you were in it, it might be safer to assume it hasn't.

That said, I saw a bullhorn on sale at the hardware store for half-off, and you can always borrow my membership if you need to make mysterious purchases of toilet paper rolls in bulk.

I love you. Never forget that. And also how to catch a biscuit so that it doesn't explode.

-Mom


	5. Hobbes

> I don't actually know how to begin this. There are so many fragments and intertwining narratives and triumphs and fights and terrible things and feeling so very, very proud of you, even if I couldn't say it at the time.

"Still having trouble?" Hobbes asked, after Calvin deleted his latest attempt.

"Where is the beginning?" Calvin said in response. "Is it when you and I met, when Susie met Mr. Bun, when I first plastered Susie with a snowball? When we started dating? When Yuki joined us? When we adopted?"

"Could be all of those," Hobbes said.

"I even tried to start this with a dictionary definition of what polyamory is, but it felt like a robot talking, and this is supposed to be one of the most human things we create. It's the record of life, the beginning bits, before the kid learns to take a selfie, or joins their first social media platform. I tried to capture everything, I want to show everything, and now I don't know where to start or how to put it together."

Hobbes peered over Calvin's shoulder.

"Looks like a G.R.O.S.S. meeting to me. Right before we flew the water blimp and sprayed Susie through the window."

"That's...not a terrible idea," Calvin said.

> Most stories in our family begin with water balloons, snowballs, or biscuits. We are equally likely to be throwing them as receiving them, depending on who you talk to, and often times, one of us is throwing them at the other.
> 
> With love.
> 
> Usually.
> 
> Mom says she knew I had a crush on Susie when I was six because I always took a little extra care to make sure my snowballs were perfect before flinging them at her. I distinctly remember at that time thinking that girls were terrible, because they kept brainwashing Hobbes into attending tea parties and making him think about smooches.

"Speaking of," Calvin said, turning to his best friend, "you never did tell me how you came to know of things like smooches and the other things that go along with them."

"I've been around your parents more than you have," Hobbes said. "They really liked to talk a lot when the laundry was getting folded. I think they believed it was their safe place, since you were always avoiding chores."

"What did they have to say about me?"

"Oh, this and that," Hobbes said, adopting the time that he thought sounded like he knew more than he was telling. What it really meant, Calvin thought, was that Hobbes didn't know anything. "They were mostly discussing whatever our latest accomplishment was, whether it was in school or with Susie. A lot of the time they gave each other kisses. Sometimes they did more than that."

"Thank you for that mental image," Calvin said, closing his eyes in reflex and turning back to the computer.

> Sometimes it takes us a while, when we're young, what seems obvious to us as adults. I want you to be able to come to those conclusions yourself, without pushing you in one direction or another. Mom and Dad tried to do that with me. Sometimes they needed to step in so I wouldn't hurt myself, or to explain to me why it's a bad idea to try and deliberately infect someone with chicken pox.
> 
> I want you to be safe, and I want you to be able to explore the furthest reaches of your imagination, like I did. I won't always get it right, because Mom and Dad didn't, either. And because Hobbes is occasionally a bad influence.

"Bad influence? I've practically been your shoulder tiger angel all your life!" Hobbes exclaimed.

"Hardly," Calvin retorted. "You've always encouraged me to selectively obey the rules."

"Not me." Hobbes feigned indignance. "That's your mother and father all the way."

"Since when?"

"Since always. Remember how your Mom used to talk about 'moral duties to disobey unjust laws'?"

"Sure," Calvin said, "but all I remember was getting in trouble every time I tried not to do what they ordered me to do."

"And your Dad talking about 'the existence of a loophole is an indication of the need for a better rule'?"

"Right, but then they would change the rules."

"Exactly," Hobbes said, as if making a grand conclusion. When Calvin shrugged, he continued. "What's the only permanent rule of Calvinball?"

"You can't play it the same way twice."

" _Why?_ "

"Because I'm terrible at games that have inflexible unchanging rules."

"Sure. Now think about this: How did Rosalyn beat us at a game she had never played before in her life and couldn't possibly have prepared for?"

"She got lucky," Calvin said, burning a bit at the memory of that defeat.

"Yes, recognizing that Calvinball is fundamentally a game of improvisation and negotiation in the name of fun was a matter of luck for the person who had been babysitting you successfully for years," Hobbes said flatly. "Try again."

"Rosalyn figured out the point was to find the loopholes in the rules that existed and how to make up new rules that would benefit herself. What does this have to do with Mom and Dad?"

"They had to strike a balance between encouraging creative thinking in you and creating an tiny anarchic force of chaos," Hobbes said.

"Your point?" Calvin snapped.

"Your Mom and Dad never punished you for finding a loophole, but they came down hard on you for what you did with it," Hobbes said.

Calvin opened his mouth to protest, to proudly orate the many counterexamples his life contained, but found that every time he thought he had one, when he actually thought about it, Hobbes was right.

"...Fine," Calvin said after a little while, and then turned back to the computer. Then deleted what he had written again and started typing furiously once the idea that Hobbes had suggested took hold.

> Most of the stories of our lives are routine, going according to a script that we have fashioned for ourselves over a long period of time. The interesting things, the fun things, the things that stick out, are when we deviate from the script. When we decide that the rules we've set out for ourselves don't apply in this case. When it's time for Calvinball.
> 
> We will make exceptions for you, and you will make exceptions for yourself and others, and from those exceptions will come our stories, whether they are sad, happy, triumphant, despondent, or laugh-out-loud funny (most likely, the last of those.)
> 
> We won't always decide on the right exceptions at the right time, but I promise we'll always be open to the idea of making an exception, even if it doesn't actually happen.
> 
> You are going to be an exceptional child. And we love you for it.


	6. Mina...or Alex...or Desi...or Kat...or Peggy...or The Emoji of a Snowman Mooning the Audience

"What are you up to?" Calvin/Susie/Yuki/Dawn/George's child said.

"I'm working on a story," he replied.

"Oh, really," said the child. "Do I know this story?"

"Yes," Calvin said, laying out another page on his computer. "You've known this story ever since you came to live with us."

"You're going to use that picture?" said their child. "I'm tripping over my feet in those heels."

"It was the first time you'd seen shoes you liked that weren't Susie's very sensible flats. You wanted to see whether or not the hype was worth it."

"I was three!" the child protested.

"We made an exception," Calvin said, shrugging.

Their child yawned.

"Time for bed, then?" Calvin asked.

"Not before I get a bedtime story," their child retorted.

"I accept your terms," Calvin said, closing his computer and following their child into the bedroom.

"Would you tell me the story of Hamster Huey tonight?" their child asked, after getting underneath the blankets.

"Sure. Where should we start?"

"At the beginning," their child declared authoritatively. "'Stories should always start at the beginning,' Grandma and Grandpa Derkins say."

"The beginning, then," Calvin said, adjusting the covers. "Are you comfortable?"

"Yes," their child said, snuggling up.

"In a small village, near a small town, in a kingdom very far way from here, there lived a hamster, whose name was Huey. Huey was loved by the people of...oh, what's the name of the village?"

"Stone Lake," the child replied, frowning.

"That's right," Calvin said. "Details are always important in stories. If you don't give details, the story is flat and generic."

"I know that," said their child. "Start over?"

"In the small village of Stone Lake, near the town of..."

"Zauerberg."

"Zauerberg, in the kingdom of..."

"Domino."

"Domino, there lived a hamster named Huey. Huey was well loved by the people of Stone Lake...."

**Author's Note:**

> I considered an alternate title for this work: "Five Times Calvin Realized His Mother Knew What She Was Talking About, and One Time He Applied Those Lessons" but I ultimately settled on the shorter, more mysterious one, because I think it's more thematically appropriate. I didn't realize I'd written something close enough to the five times style until I squinted at it just right, so that's why that tag is there. The rest are hopefully more obvious. 
> 
> Happy Yuletide!


End file.
